I was at a school start of year meeting last night in my local Catholic Ethos secondary school. Clearly people from a lot of different faiths in attendance (including a mother in full burka and veil) and no one took any notice. Non catholics are totally welcome there as they are in most Catholic run schools around the country (I fully accept there will be the odd exception but that is usually down to an idiot of a priest or board of management rather then anything else)
When my own kids got the sacraments, around 10-15% of their class did not and so were given other things to do when that element was being covered in the class. However, at the celebration night held afterwards in the school, all of them came in, dressed up and joined in the celebrations as did their family. Most of the secondary schools now have multi-cultural days and kids are learning more and more about other cultures and faiths.
The time spent on doctrine could easily be spent on less church specific matters and be used to talk about human rights, the planet, age appropriate of course. I know religion class has moved on a lot from learning questions and answers by rote and with a bit of tweaking it could be doctrine free but still allow for teaching morals, ethic and all the stuff that we were told was 10 commandments related but isn’t exclusively Christian
That's basically what the Junior Cert Religion and SPHE courses are all about. There is no "doctrine" thought as part of that.
Who are they supervising? The priest?!
In a nutshell, they are supervising each other and ensure that whatever is being organised for the kids is being done in a safe manner. Everyone involved should be Garda vetted, (each diocese will have it's own vetting leader who manages that, so priests, volunteers etc are all supposed to be Gardai vetted and it is taken very seriously these days in my experience)
The local parish has weekly classes organised for them etc, all very easy and parents more involved too and it’s kept separate from their actual education.
Its the way a lot of parishes are going as well these days, a growing number of them have stopped the "big day" and instead parents and kids come for their first communion when they are ready. Lack of priests means lay people are having to pick up the workload and certainly where I am, it's working very well but we have a priest who is fully bought in. What I've found interesting in the last few years is that a lot of those lay people are young people, often in their teens and early 20's. 600 teenagers from Ireland went to Rome last month for the Jubilee day.
